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Local filmmaker and generally cool-guy Colin MacDonald has organized the upcoming “‘Local’ is the Word” Film Screening & Art Auction as an attempt to raise funds for him upcoming film (The Withered Dead), that he hopes to shoot later on in the summer.

As part of the evening, I will be screening my piece de’ cinematic resistance, Dinner Etiquette Correctness. He also commissioned (and by ‘commissioned’ I mean ‘asked’) me to create the poster for the event. Check it out below!

Jason Eisener stands in front of a sold-out audience at a movie theatre in Dartmouth. They have all come to see Jim Henson’s Labyrinth in 35mm format.

“How many cigarettes does David Bowie smoke every day?” Eisener asks the crowd.

A young man in the front row immediately shouts out “fifty”, and then runs to the front to collect his prize.

This is all part of Thrillema, an event that happens once or twice a month at Empire 6 Cinemas on Portland Street. Eisener, a local filmmaker whose short film, Treevenge, was the only Nova Scotian film featured at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, is one of the organizers of Thrillema. Adam Perry, from The Last Game Store and Empire Theatres, also helps to put on the event with Eisener.

It started in October 2008, when Friday the 13th was playing. Since then there have been screenings of Army of Darkness, John Carpenter’s The Thing, My Bloody Valentine, Clockwork Orange, and Robocop. But Thrillema isn’t just a movie screening – it’s an experience complete with trivia, trailers programmed by Eisener, and die-hard movie fans.

Shelley Thompson, who plays the stepmother of Jennifer Connelly’s character in Labyrinth, came out as a special guest to officially introduce the film. Thompson, now residing in Halifax, admitted she had never seen the movie, much to the shock of the crowd, who cheered loudly as soon as she came onscreen during the film.

“The idea kind of comes from Austin, Texas, and the Alamo Drafthouse – seeing how they present movies,” says Eisener, who has had Treevenge and his Hobo with a Shotgun trailer screened at the famous theatre. “They treat showing movies as an art. So they would program really cool trailers to the theme of the movie, or they would have the star of an old movie come in. And they would have someone get up and talk about the movie, or talk about the history of this film. I kind of wanted to bring that sort of feel to Dartmouth.”

Eisener is from Dartmouth, and says he is happy to be hosting the event in the place where he grew up.

“I love this city, and I want to give back to it. If we had Thrillema in Halifax, people think we could do better there, but I don’t know. I think it creates an adventure for some people in Halifax who don’t come to Dartmouth too often,” says Eisener.

The trip to Dartmouth didn’t seem to keep people away from this screening. More than an hour before it was scheduled to start, there were only 65 seats still available in a theatre that holds 287 people. The lineup to get in stretched throughout the lobby.

A few fans even came in costume as characters from the Labyrinth, with one of them fully dressed as Bowie’s character Jareth, spandex and all.

Eisener says 35mm films might not be around for too much longer, so it’s important to get them screened now.

“Soon it’s going to get to the point where everything will be digital. You’re going to see them not making film prints anymore,” he says.

Eisener wants to continue having Thrillema events introduced by big fans of the movies. Matt Amyotte helped Eisener emcee Labyrinth, telling the crowd that he first saw the film when he was three and it’s still his favourite movie. Eisener hopes to find more people like Amyotte.

“If there’s anyone out there who has a superman appreciation for one of these films, or has a suggestion, let us know, and we’ll try to get it. Then they can present the movie and talk about how it affected them growing up.”

The next movie to be featured in Thrillema will be Aliens on March 26, followed by Jurassic Park on April 16. Aliens was one of Eisener’s earliest encounters with genre film.

“I remember coming down the stairs and my parents were watching Aliens, and I snuck down,” says Eisener. “I was looking behind the railing, and it was the scene where Sigourney Weaver dreams about having an alien burst through her chest. That scene came on and I saw that, and I freaked out. I ran upstairs, and didn’t tell my parents. I had trouble sleeping for days. That kind of always stuck with me.”

Tickets are $6.99 plus tax. More info can be found through the Thrillema Facebook group.

By Christmas of 2005, I had already moved to Halifax to pursue post-secondary knowledge of Applied Arts at NSCC, and was feeling pretty good about the direction of my life. Learning about Photoshop, Illustrator, Photography, Illustration and other ways to make me feel good about myself.

During Christmas break in Lunenburg, my friend Dave Maddox sent me a link to watch the SNL Short “Dick in a Box”. The link lead me to a little website called Youtube; the first website (that I knew of) where you could upload your very own videos! I was absolutely blown away and excited beyond belief. Before the launch of Youtube, the process of getting videos online was incredibly complicated, and me being notorious for my technical laziness had never learned that process.

I locked myself indoors for the remainder of my break and created a short animated music video for the Gorillaz and uploaded it to Youtube…

Vodpod videos no longer available.…They still haven’t even said thanks.

Instantly, I started brainstorming ideas for short films. I knew that I wanted to act in them, but I wasn’t entirely confident in my ability to do so (mostly because I sucked); therefore, when I got back to the city, I signed up for evening Acting Classes at Neptune Theatre.

For those of you who know what I mean when I say “Zip-Zap-Zop”, you understand how weird the theatre classes were. I loved it. It felt very liberating, to be able to run around and play with adults. It was definitely a sexual preference test.

Once the class was over, I signed up for two more, another acting class, and a musical theatre class. The problem with the musical class was that (1) I had zero knowledge on how to read music, or (2) how to sing, because back in elementary school I made fun of Elvis in music class (in Grade 3) and my teacher kicked me out of her class for the next three years. I really don’t think she was allowed to do that.

So after three of the musical theatre classes, I told the teacher that I had to call it quits, because I had no sweet clue what was going on around me. On my way out, one of the other students Kerri Leier asked me to audition for her upcoming musical called Jump! An 80’s Musical! I re-stated the fact that I had no sweet clue what was going on, and she insisted that I come out.

In my first audition, I read my sides, and then at the end, I asked to showcase my ability to “sell” a punch to the face. I did my best impression of the Ric Flair flop and promptly left the room. Later on in the day I learned that I got the part of the Jock villain, who luckily for me, had minimal singing and dancing, but a good amount of dialogue.

The next 4 months were spent watching a VHS of the routines over & over & over and dancing along with them in my tiny bedroom between rehearsals.

June came, I completed my first year of college (with good marks), and it was time for the show. Here’s the poster that I designed for the show…

And here’s a photo of me (on the right) trying too hard…

The show went very well and was deemed a success. Hip hip hooray.

Confidence: +1.

During the rehearsals, the musical director, Matt Amyotte asked a few of us if anyone had wanted to be in his friend’s movie. The way he phrased it made me think it would just be a couple guys in a backyard with a Hi-8 camcorder, so I thought “fuck, I can do that”. He then said it was Jason Eisener‘s next movie. I knew that I had heard the name, but I wasn’t sure until he brought up The Teeth Beneath, a film that Eisener made and I had seen parts of, I loved what I had seen.

A week later I was having a beer with Jason and John Davies and they were filling me in with plans for their epic feature length film Streets of Domination.

FINALLY, Jason Eisener has uploaded the Streets of Domination Teaser online! The release of the film is still likely years away, but here’s the teaser to one of the most ambitious independent films ever made filmed!…

Here’s an old trailer John Davies and I created quickly before a screening of Fist of Death a couple years ago. We shot this film before Hobo with a Shotgun and Treevenge. But we haven’t been able to find the time to invest in editing this beast. I’m posting this to help keep the spirit alive, hopefully she’ll get finished soon.

This baby was our film school.

This film for me was an incredible experience; my first endeavor into acting for film, and probably the single greatest influence on which direction my life has taken. I hope you all have as much fun watching the teaser as I did acting in it. I gave a lot of myself to Streets of Domination, and it feels absolutely magnificent to have people seeing a minute and a half’s worth of it.

Don’t get too excited though, Eisener has a little thing called Hobo With a Shotgun to deal with before he can even think of Streets again.